Perth power outages: Roger Cook forced to apologise after blackouts cause loss of money for business owners

Roger Cook was forced to apologise and business owners were left counting the cost after another wave of power outages plunged 40,000 homes and businesses across the city into darkness on Tuesday.

Drizzly rain was blamed for sparking 51 pole top fires in suburbs from Hamilton Hill to Hocking, with suburbs including Girrawheen, Beechboro, Balcatta, The Vines, Balga, Caversham, Wanneroo, Kelmscott and Duncraig also affected.

It was the the second major round of power outages caused by pole top fires this year after metropolitan and rural properties went up to almost a week without power in January.

The outages have hit many businesses hard, with some left to the count the cost of losing a day’s worth of sales.

Doctors surgeries, sports clubs, and major shopping centres were also forced to shut their doors.

Pure and Natural Honey Co director Liam Ross said he had to send staff home and keep the factory doors shut due to a lack of power in Landsdale.

“Our employees have had to be sent home and we’re unable to operate today,” he said.

“It’s causing a loss of income for us and substantial headaches.”

Mr Ross estimated his business would lose up to $3000 in lost sales.

“It’s not just myself, it’s my employees as well they had to be sent some without pay as they’re casual, so this impacts them as well as me,” he said.

“My employees arrived at work this morning and couldn’t open the roller door, they’ve basically gone to work and then had to be sent home.”

Speaking in Pinjarra, Mr Cook said he was sorry for the inconvenience.

“We have around about 30,000 (40,000) residents who were with our power today and we apologise for the inconvenience,” he said.

“These pole top fire events, which occur mostly in these late summer periods are inconvenient.”

Mr Cook said steps were being taken to restore power to customers.

“Western Power have got everyone on the job today to make sure that we reconnect those customers as soon as possible,” he said.

“We know it’s we know it’s inconvenient and we’ll do everything we can to reconnect those customers.”

Western Power said the outages were caused by “power pole damage due to light, drizzly weather causing pole top fires.”

“Pole top fires can occur during light drizzling rain or misty damp conditions when a combination of recent dust and pollution builds up to creates paths or ‘tracks’ on the insulators, enabling electricity to jump across,” a spokesperson said.

“This tracking electricity can heat elements of the pole infrastructure to a point where they smoulder and burn.”

Western Power executive manager of asset operations Zane Christmas said the utility was working to get power restored as soon as possible but conceded some homes could remain without power overnight.

He said customers were “no more frustrated than our teams trying to repair it”.

“It’s random events, very difficult to predict. (We’re) spending a huge amount of money every year trying to mitigate it, but it is a really difficult sort of phenomenon,” he told ABC Radio.

Mr Christmas added the company was looking at trialling steel poles, which “will have some benefit, obviously not burning is one of them but it brings with it other risks so we’ve got to mitigate both risks”.

Liberal leader Libby Mettam said the power outages were a result of misaligned priorities.

“This is another example of the Premier not doing his job, we’ve got over 90 unplanned outages, we’ve got 40,000 houses in darkness because the Cook Labor government have their priorities all wrong,” she said.

“They’re focused on fancy race tracks by the Swan, hundreds of millions committed to a special NRL team instead of ensuring that Western Australians have reliable and affordable energy.”

Early on Tuesday morning, Main Street in Osborne Park had been closed in both directions as a result of the power outage.

Traffic lights were also out at the Altone and Benara Roads intersection in Beechboro and on Malaga Drive near Reid Highway.

Western Power said its maintenance team was “constantly improving” the way 860,000 power poles across the network were managed.

“We have a comprehensive poles and wires maintenance program and a preventative program which includes ‘de-energised’ siliconing and washing, insulator replacements, and managing trees and vegetation near wires, and high-pressure cleaning of insulators,” they said.